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"Shit." Tony breathed. "Shit."
"Hey, it's okay." Steve seemed to sense he was back to himself, relatively speaking, and he reached up to carefully extract Tony's hands from his hair. He ran a hand through it himself, smoothing out the parts Tony had mussed up with a gentle murmur. "Don't hurt yourself."
"I—" Tony started, then stopped, his throat so dry he could hardly form the words. "Water?"
"Yeah." Steve's hand dropped briefly to his cheek, brushing a thumb there so lightly Tony wasn't sure if it actually happened at all. Then he was looping his arm under Tony's shoulders, helping him up. "Let's get you some water."
"Class." Tony shook his head. "I have—"
"You have nothing until you get some water."
"But you—"
"They're functioning young adults, they'll survive five minutes without us." Steve's no-nonsense tone broke, went soft. "Tony, give yourself a minute, okay?"
"You don't have to stay wi—"
"Shut up." The fondness in Steve's voice contradicted his words, not to mention the way he hugged Tony closer even as he spoke.
"I knew I'd grow on you eventually." Tony pointed out somewhat gleefully.
"I think we passed 'growing on me' sometime after you got me to sing 'You Give Love a Bad Name' in front of dozens of strangers." Steve shot him a wry look.
"I still have that as my ringtone for you." Tony grinned. "You were great."
"I didn't know a single one of the words."
"Did I say great? I meant hysterical."
Steve shook his head with a chuckle, and removed his arm from around Tony to let him get a drink from the water fountain. When he finished gulping down somewhere close to a gallon of water, he looked up to find Steve looking much more somber.
"What's with the face?"
"That was my fault, wasn't it?" Before Tony could even open his mouth, Steve continued. He had his jaw set in a way that reminded Tony eerily of someone, though he couldn't quite put a pin on who. "For prying last night. I opened a can of worms you'd been trying so hard to keep a lid on, and I didn't even think about what that might mean for you—"
"To be fair, repression isn't exactly the healthiest coping mechanism to begin with—"
"But it should've been your choice and I—"
"Steve, you didn't take that choice from me, okay?" Tony shook his head firmly. "I chose to tell you, because I wanted you to know. And it…helped, I think. Besides, if anyone deserves to hear it from the source, you do. So just…don't take this mess to heart or anything, okay? Hell, I probably should've had a panic attack long before now, isn't that how you're supposed to react to trauma? Hey, look at you, making me normal—"
"I didn't make you normal, I gave you panic attacks—"
"Attack, singular, don't go jinxing me just yet big guy." Tony tried for a grin. "And like I said, it was bound to happen anyway. I just…got it out of the way, right? Let's look at it like that."
"I couldn't even help." Steve wasn't meeting his eyes, just staring at his shoes as if they held all the answers. For all his broad shoulders and rippling muscles, Steve just looked small. "You were upset and I couldn't do anything."
"Steve, if you hadn't come and got me I'd still be curled up in a corner while students threw peanuts at me, I'd say—"
"While they what? Who did that?" Steve demanded, eyes snapping up.
"Whoa, hey, no one threw anything, it's just a phrase." Tony put his hands in the air innocently. "My point is, you did help. A lot, okay? It's…I'm not used to having someone bother to come after me, and that's, it's good. Nice."
Way to English, Stark.
Steve just stared at him like he'd lost his mind.
"Tony, you ran out of there like you were possessed, of course I'd go after you."
Not possessed, just horny, but hey, at least now he could chalk that strange behavior up to a panic attack. Which, hey, look at that, extremely awkward erection totally gone.
"We should really get to class." Tony realized. "How late are we?"
"Not much, a few minutes. Phineas won't be very happy with us, but I'm sure the kids are fine." Steve laid a hand on Tony's upper arm and squeezed once, carefully. "It's fine, Tony. I'll see you third period."
"Yeah." Tony nodded, getting his bearings. "Yeah, third period. Cool. I'll just go…get pelted by paint. Again. Whose idea was that, anyway?"
"All yours." Steve used a thumb to wipe a streak of blue paint off Tony's cheek with an amused smile. "You can tell by the mess it made of the quad. Signature Tony Stark, there."
Tony's thoughts flickered briefly to the days when signature Tony Stark meant booze and weapons and sex. He wondered what it meant that he liked this better. It helped that he knew Pepper would just remind him that he was still making explosions and messes for other people to clean up either way, and tell him to stop whining about what most would consider personal growth.
"You know me." Tony smiled back. "If it doesn't add paperwork to Cogman's desk, I obviously wasn't involved."
Chapter 8
Steve was irrationally relieved to wake up drugged and handcuffed to a pole.
Really, he was starting to worry for his sanity. But then, prior to today Iron Man had taken out four warehouses in a row, once a week for the past month, without so much as a heads up. Not that he liked being kidnapped, but it lent a certain sense of predictability to things. There was a kidnapping, some banter, he got a few inches closer to talking Iron Man into coming clean, and then he was rescued before he got blown to pieces, which was always a good thing.
Steve knew he was getting close to convincing Iron Man to join SHIELD, work for the good guys. Why else would Iron Man have helped them when the Destroyer went berserk? Steve had been getting through to him, he knew he had. Maybe that was why Iron Man had stopped kidnapping him; Steve had planted doubt in his mind. That was good, that was an important step forward, now Steve just needed to use this opportunity to cement it. He hadn't seen Iron Man since the Destroyer attack more than a month ago; by the time they got the call these days, Iron Man was already long gone, leaving nothing but a destroyed warehouse or a malignant computer virus in his wake.
"So." Steve blinked blearily as he came to awareness. "Been a while."
Iron Man seemed oddly distracted this time, fiddling with a computer terminal to the far left instead of focusing on Steve.
"Needed to know you wouldn't interfere; drugs were the best bet."
"You used to kidnap me for the heck of it."
"Times change, darling." Iron Man shrugged. "Even people, every once in a while."
"You considering switching teams?" Steve felt a heady rush of elation for a moment. Had he really managed to—
"It's a little late for that." Iron Man gave a mechanical sounding snort. "Try retirement. When my work's done here, anyway."
"You're…" Steve blinked in surprise. "Quitting?"
Of all the ways he'd seen their cat and mouse game ending, that hadn't been one.
